


shut out and confined

by wrack



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: (in the form of unspecified Bad Things happening to Crow offscreen), Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Glint’s Dad Jokes, Hoarding, Implied/Referenced Violence, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 10:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30020079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrack/pseuds/wrack
Summary: It started with the feather.(Crow collects treasures. The Spider objects.)
Relationships: Crow & Glint
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	shut out and confined

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/gifts).



> For Hokuto! I hope you enjoy this little bit of Mid-Month Crow and Glint Sadness (make it an official Destiny holiday!)

It started with the feather.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about it, not if you were someone who’d picked up a lot of feathers. Crow, who hadn’t, was riveted. He turned the battered little thing over and over in his hands, running his finger along the rachis. When he held it up to Glint’s light, the dusty black surface shimmered like a puddle of oil. The sight made his heart clench. Via some twisting, roundabout path, it reminded him of an early rez. He’d come back to himself underneath a stand of briars, dizzy from the shock of dying. The hillside was alive with shouts and snapping twigs, and he remembered: he’d seen his first ever Hunter moving through the undergrowth like a shadow, stopped to call out to them amid a rush of excitement over meeting someone like himself at last. Head muzzy with confusion, he tried to roll over onto his side – and froze. Peering out of the thicket next to his face was a pair of huge black eyes; he could just about make out a small, furry shape crouched in the darkness behind them. Glint put the elusive noun in his head _(rabbit),_ followed by a qualifying adjective _(young)._ They held each other’s gazes for a beat or two, equally mesmerised, before an inexplicable flash of shame drove Crow to look away. When he glanced back, the eyes were gone. The encounter had lasted less than five seconds, but some part of him still felt it was almost enough to redeem everything that came afterward.

“Can we keep this?” He paused, reconsidering. “I mean… would it be right to?”

“I don’t see why not,” Glint said, choosing his words with care. “It’s not as if the original owner needs it any more. But I wouldn’t mention it to Spider. You know how he gets.”

Crow did. His heart clenched for a different reason when he made it back to the Shore, but the Spider was busy barking orders at Arrha and didn’t even pause to acknowledge Glint’s calm “Nothing to declare.” As soon as he was sure they were alone, he took the feather out and examined it again. In the dim half-light of the workshop, it looked wholly unfamiliar. Holding it cupped in his hands, he felt uncomfortably like he’d managed to get away with something.

It should have _ended_ with the feather. The sensible part of him knew that, but it was eclipsed by the part of him that wanted to pick up every tiny, collectible object it saw. He could sometimes rein the impulse in while they were working the Shore, but it was much stronger when they went chasing shipments on Earth. Walking through an empty lake bed, a glitter deep down in the bedrock caught his eye.

“Pyrite,” Glint told him, dancing a loop around his head. “Also known as fool’s gold. I hope you weren’t planning to spend that.”

“Looks more like silver to me,” Crow said, pointedly skirting the joke. “Do you think Baron Spider would fall for it?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he could take them back. Glint's flicker of nervousness mirrored his; neither of them were sure who the fear had originated with. When Crow stooped to chisel a small, sparkling chunk off with his knife, he felt the weight of imaginary eyes on him the entire time. His heart and lungs had migrated up into his throat by the time they made it back to the safehouse, but the Spider paid them no more attention than he had before. Their brilliant little secret was safe.

After that, he grew bolder. Anything unclaimed that was compact enough to secrete away in his cloak became fair game; he could have asked Glint to bring larger items in, but he had nowhere safe to store them until they could be transmatted. Besides, Glint worried. He did his best to conceal it, but there was no hiding such an obvious fact from their link. Only once did he voice his concern. They’d come across a starburst of phaseglass shards, trampled into the ground where some Guardian had scattered them; when Crow knelt to dig them out, they came away hooked into the fabric of his gloves. A few of them caught in his exposed flesh, but the pain was too minor to distract him. It took a surge of Glint’s healing energy to slow him down.

“You don’t need to waste our Light on those,” he said. His voice was hoarse, drying up from lack of use. “They’re just splinters.”

“It’s not a waste.” The words were taut. Glint found himself unable to inject any cheer into them. “Is this… is it really necessary?”

It was, but Crow couldn’t explain why – not even to his own Ghost, the better part of himself. He might have said _I need to have something I can call mine_ or _I want to get one over on Spider_ or just _I wish my workshop had a bit more decoration._ Any one of those could have been the truth. Maybe none of them came close. Either way, he couldn’t stop digging. At one point, a tracer round pinged over his head; he rolled into cover, scoped the terrain for a little while, and came back once he was satisfied they’d moved on. Some sniper, missing a stationary target by that sort of margin. His harassers were getting sloppy.

He found the bond a week later. The sight of it winking up at him from the wreckage almost broke him of his collecting habit; Glint’s murmured assurance that its owner had discarded it a long time ago did little to ease his wariness. Still, it was brighter and more beautiful than any of the trinkets he’d picked up so far. Once he’d knelt down to get a closer look, he had no choice but to brush the dull red Shore dust off it, and once he’d done _that,_ there was no real reason not to ease it out from underneath the spar where it rested. It wasn’t until he had it in his hands that an unpleasant possibility occurred to him.

“The Warlock who wore this… they didn’t die their final death here, did they?”

“No,” Glint said, nudging his shoulder gently. “Oh, no. We’d know if they had. Their Ghost probably found something more powerful at the bottom of their inventory.”

Crow slipped the bond over his fingers. It slid down onto his wrist, settling there like a bracelet. A small, rebellious voice urged him to push it up further, but the rest of him recoiled at the thought. Even letting it hang where it was felt uncomfortable. He shook it off into his other hand, unsure whether that faint sense of revulsion stemmed from him or Glint. “Why can’t I wear one of these?”

“Tradition, I suppose.” That would have been an unsatisfactory answer for any Guardian, never mind one as inquisitive as Crow. Glint wished he had a better one. “Hunters wear cloaks, Titans wear marks, and Warlocks wear bonds. It’s been that way for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Since the earliest days of the Iron Lords.” That just prompted more questions. By the time they hit the end of their long, circuitous route back to Spider’s safehouse, Glint had made it as far as Lord Felwinter’s laying claim to the mountain that bore his name. Something in him ached to see Crow’s eyes shine even brighter as he listened. These were the sorts of stories he ought to have heard from older and more seasoned Lights back at the Tower, told around a brazier as the sun went down. They should have been the ones to pass on this piece of his history. Their shared history.

(Afterward, Glint couldn’t help but wonder if that was what had undone them. Maybe Crow had looked too happy.)

The workshop had been ransacked. Crates lay strewn across the floor, spilling their contents into the metal grating. The rough sheets that covered them hung in tattered ribbons. Everything that might one day be of value to the Spider remained untouched, but that still left plenty to destroy. The chaos itself paled in comparison to other messes Crow had been forced to clean up. That part didn't matter at all.

He paced the room several times to make sure, ignoring the sharp tug of pain in his right side every time he breathed in. They'd rooted out every single one of his treasures, even the mismatched buttons he kept hidden beneath a grating. Even the sweet-smelling sprig of rosemary that was starting to dry up inside his toolkit. All gone. He sat down on an upturned box, limbs threatening to give way even with the support of Glint's healing Light.

“I've run an analysis,” Glint said, voice low. “There's no reason... when I spoke to him, I used the exact same tone I always do. The _exact_ same tone. They shouldn't have suspected...” He tailed off. Crow's desire for him to stop talking shone out bright and clear.

“Does it matter?” The words didn't even make a dent in the silence settling around them. Instead of answering, Glint made a moth-light landing on his uninjured shoulder and tucked himself into the crook of his neck. The healing warmth had made it as far as his ribs. He couldn't stop replaying the conversation either, trying to find the point where he'd gone wrong. Trying to find some way in which it was all his fault, because that meant he'd know how to avoid it next time. He'd stopped to sketch a cross-armed bow in front of the throne, just the same as usual. Glint had said “Nothing to declare”; Crow didn't even need the ability to run a machine analysis to know he'd sounded just the same as usual. Everything had played out just the same as usual - until the Spider sat forward in his chair, primary hands steepled, and said, “Are you sure, little bird?” He hadn't even spared a glance for Glint, laying all his attention on Crow instead. Then the whole charade had fallen apart.

“ _We did find something, but... it’s worthless, Baron Spider. Just an old bond someone threw away.”_

“ _Oh? Are you an expert in valuation, now?”_

“ _I – of course not. I only meant –“_

“ _No, by all means. You haven’t proven to be much of an investment so far. If you have extra services on offer, I’d like to make use of them.”_ And then, inevitably: _“Come here, Glint.”_

The back of Crow's neck ached. “ _I don’t like the way he’s looking at me,_ ” the Spider had said, after a while. “ _Too proud by half, still_.” What had he meant, _still?_ Even if he’d wanted to, Crow could never forget the position their arrangement put him in. His mind worried at the question like a warbeast on prey. It would have continued to do so if he hadn't heard heavy footsteps in the corridor outside.

He flew up off the box in a single movement, ignoring the vague, diffuse ache that spread through his healed limbs. Glint disappeared in a flash. Seized by unthinking rabbit-fear, half of Crow wanted to join him in hiding. The other half urged him to draw on the fiery core inside and fight back. Caught between those two impulses, he stood frozen. When his visitor stepped through the archway, he could do nothing but stare.

_Firiks,_ he remembered, after a brief, guilty moment's worth of struggling for the name. They'd worked several salvage jobs together; he was a quiet soul, not much given to boasting or posturing. Crow had never known him to be cruel. That alone held him in place as Firiks crossed the room, navigating his way around islands of strewn rubbish. He came to a halt several paces away from Crow, shrinking into himself a little. His left primary limb flexed a little, starting to reach into his cloak.

Driven by a hot flash of terror, Crow flinched back. Firiks' hand stilled. Once his mind caught up to his body, Crow realised the gesture hadn't been aggressive. When he began to relax, Firiks tapped his own chest with the other primary.

“Firiks,” he said, quite justifiably assuming Crow needed the reminder. “House Wolves.” He peered into Crow's face as if searching for a reaction. Glint couldn't quite suppress a flash of worry, but there was no need. Whatever the name might have meant to Crow's past self, it was lost now. Keeping his many-faceted gaze fixed on Crow, he lifted his cloak again. This time, his movements were slower and more deliberate. When he withdrew his hand, there was a dull black object pinched between his claws.

Crow couldn't take his eyes off it. Missing barbs and damaged quill notwithstanding, it was unmistakably his feather. Was this a test? He didn't know Firiks well enough to say if he harboured any thoughts of rebellion. Didn't know anyone well enough, in all honesty. _“If he's not loyal, he doesn't deserve to wear my sigil,”_ he heard the Spider say. _“Take it off him.”_ People with ideas above their station got weeded out fast here. It had to be a trick. 

“House Wolves,” Firiks repeated, clicking a little on the second word. Then, with even greater emphasis: “Of the Reef.” It sounded almost as if he were swearing an oath. For a moment, Crow was tempted to reveal just how much of Firiks' tongue he'd picked up on. Firiks spoke no more than a few words of his own – the Spider didn't want his lackeys becoming too fluent in what Glint called 'Guardian creole' – and the language barrier wasn't helping him process this exchange at all. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to. Sometimes, pretending to understand less than he did was the only weapon available to him. He would have to find some other way to make sense of Firiks' strange sympathy.

Firiks, whose patience so far seemed infinite. He was still offering the feather. Even if he was sincere, Crow questioned how safe they were with the Spider and his enforcers right next door. It wasn't unheard of for others with ill intentions to come into the workshop after the Spider vented his spleen in public, fired up by the spectacle and emboldened by seeing him brought low. An absurd image drifted across his mind: Firiks comforting him the way  Eliksni sometimes comforted each other, running claws through his hair until it stood up on end. The mere thought of that soothing touch was enough to make him shiver. It was rare enough among the Spider's crew; nobody would ever have considered extending it to him. Tucked away inside a pocket of Light, Glint couldn't keep his own spasm of grief from filtering down into their connection.

Crow hovered there, caught between reaching out and holding back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! ♥


End file.
